The London “Lancet” is sufficiently ungallant to utter the following: “There is no room here for the contention that, as compared with the boy, the girl has not had fair play; that opportunities for cultivating the art have in her case been few, in his many. The reverse is the truth. If there is a branch of education in which girls have been schooled, to the neglect of every other, it is precisely that of music. It is among the primary subjects to which she is put, and among the very last she is allowed to leave off. Not one hour a day, but many hours out of the 24, are consumed by her at the pianoforte, to say nothing of other instruments, while singing lessons are usually given in supplement to these. It might have been, though, that if practice gives perfection, woman would have excelled her male counterpart, not only as an executant, but as a composer. But what are the facts ? In instrumental performance she cannot for a moment compare with him, while as to composition she is nowhere. Considering the time she has spent over it, her failure to evolve new harmonies, or even new melodies, is one of the most extraordinary enigmas in the history of the fine arts.”
